Garden swings and reclining lounge chairs are popular backyard, garden and pool accessories for sitting, relaxing and outdoor entertaining. Numerous designs have been introduced over the years that are comfortable and designed for therapeutic comfort. Various reclining lounge chairs or complicated articulated structures provide a fixed sitting structure, but lack the therapeutic comfort of a reclining lounge chair. Yet only simple, static chairs or lounges have been introduced hanging from a support to provide a simple swing. Structures that provide soothing pendular movements when in motion are lacking and no adjustable lounge garden swing with a lounge seat designed with therapeutic comfort have been introduced.
There are numerous chairs including reclining, zero gravity and other therapeutically designed chairs in the marketplace. Some are designed capable of gliding and some capable of rocking motions, many of them are chair designs originating decades ago.
One early such chair sought comfort where an occupant could sit with feet raised above the ground with the ability to adjust the tilting or angular position, of the chair and select the angle at which the chair reclines. The chair used a rack and pinion type adjustment means or a sprocket and sliding pin type adjustment means as identified in U.S. Pat. No. 3,235,304. However, such a chair continues to lack any swinging capability.
Improved styles provided better means of adjusting the angle at which the chair reclines by providing, for example, a factional coupling means for use in adjusting the relative angular position of the seat and the back relative to each other. Such a chair is described, in U.S. Pat. No. 3,934,932. However, the improved adjustment mechanism, lacks integration of a reclining chair with a garden, swing.
Later, more elaborate designs provided further improvements to adjustment mechanisms and improved adjustments between the seal portion and backrest portion. Such chair designs are discussed in U.S. Pat. No. 6,902,238, however, complex chairs of this, kind are far removed from the challenging garden setting and impractical for the garden swing application.
Further designs added a gliding motion with the reclining feature such as in U.S. Pat. No. 7,997,644, but continued to lack application in the complex garden setting or to provide an appealing swing motion for the occupant much less the comfort of a therapeutically designed lounge seat.
Further designs added, a rocking motion to the reclining feature such as in U.S. Pat. No. 3,123,288. At the time, chairs were capable of providing a controlled rocking motion only when in the upright position. Many chairs included some type of safety feature such as an extendable foot that prevented rocking when the chair is in a reclined position. This new design provided a means of a rocking motion even when the chair was in a reclined position. However, these chairs continued to lack the same desired features of designed for therapeutic comfort in a garden swing.
Zero gravity chairs evolved for increased comfort and relaxation in a lounge seat. Zero gravity chairs are generally designed with a rigid therapeutically designed shape to hold an occupant in a position where the angle between the legs and the torso may be greater than 90 degrees. The term zero gravity positioning relates to the orientation of the legs above the level of the heart, when in a substantially horizontal position. Typically, zero gravity chairs are designed such that the legs may be elevated such that the legs are even with or above a user's heart Zero gravity chairs may optionally enable the user to adjust the backrest portion to pivot relative to the seat portion allowing the user to adjust an angle between die seat portion and the backrest portion. These chairs are further optionally designed to enable both the backrest portion and the seat portion to pivot as a unit independent of the angle adjustment and for the entire chair to rotate on a base. An example of such a chair is described in U.S. Pat. No. 7,311,359.
Attempts to take any of these concepts to the outdoor garden setting have been limited. Early concepts created basic chain swings that incorporated a seating area with a planting area such as in U.S. Pat. No. 6,655,083.
More recent designs provide more elegant benches seats that are rigid and fixed, and swings on a stable structure to provide a pendular motion. Such a chair is identified in U.S. Pat. No. 6,994,631.
Improvements upon this concept provide more comfortable chairs with extendable foot rests and headrests. Such a chair is identified in U.S. Pat. No. 6,949,027.
However, even the recent garden swing designs provide fixed seats tor sitting, but lack the ability to adjust into a reclining or near zero antigravity position for lounging that are capable of a pendular motion in the garden setting. What remains lacking are therapeutically designed lounge seats that are capable of redlining relative to the pendular structure with means of adjusting the reclination angle of the lounge seat.
Accordingly, there remains a need for a comfortable and therapeutically designed reclining lounge seat with a soothing pendular movement when in motion. The present invention solves many of these issues by providing an adjustable lounge garden swing having a soothing pendular movement when in motion.